Maybe startups can fix higher education with Tade Oyerinde from Campus
16 Jul 2024 (2 months ago)
Introduction
- Higher education is facing issues like skyrocketing admissions and falling enrollment.
- Tade Oyerinde from Campus, a fully online community college, believes they have a solution.
- Campus.edu is a fully accredited two-year online college.
- Students learn from top professors from prestigious universities like Princeton, UCLA, and NYU.
- The federal government pays for the tuition for most students through Pell Grants, so the majority don't pay anything out of pocket and none take on student loans.
- After two years, students transfer to a four-year school with no debt.
- Tade Oyerinde saw that the higher education system was not working effectively.
- He wanted to create a new approach to community college, focusing on the actual learning and classes.
The current issues facing community colleges
- Tade Oyerinde founded Campus Wire in 2016 to provide online learning software for colleges and universities.
- While demonstrating his software at UCLA, Oyerinde discovered the "adjunct faculty crisis," where many professors, especially adjuncts, face financial struggles and job insecurity.
- Community colleges face a "low completion rate crisis," with graduation rates below 30%, despite 82% of students enrolling with the intention of obtaining a bachelor's degree.
- Oyerinde proposes a solution involving software-driven community colleges with low tuition fees, allowing students to complete the first two years of college without debt and learning from professors from top schools.
- Campus, a higher education startup founded by Oyerinde, overcame the accreditation barrier by acquiring an existing accredited community college, MTI College, in Sacramento.
- The acquisition of MTI College allowed Campus to quickly enter the community college market and offer online learning, which has become increasingly important post-pandemic.
Serving both Students and professors with Campus
- Campus serves both students and professors.
- Professors are paid double the average college rate, $8,000 per class.
- There are about 270 professors on the waitlist to teach with Campus.
- Most professors teach at top 100 schools, 95% at top 50 schools.
- The name "Campus" attracts professors because it feels like the future of higher education.
- Initially, it was difficult to attract students due to skepticism and a history of bad actors in the higher education space.
- As the program has grown and produced graduates, it has become easier to attract students.
Developing the curriculum
- Campus offers online business administration associate degrees with plans to introduce concentrations in the future.
- The curriculum provides students with fundamental business skills and knowledge applicable to various career paths, particularly for Gen Z and Gen Alpha interested in entrepreneurship.
- Initial fundraising challenges were overcome by targeting investors who shared the vision of making college more useful, skills-embedded, accessible, efficient, and adaptable.
- Early support came from Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI and former president of Y Combinator, who recognized the need for a tech-enabled, adaptive college experience responsive to the changing job landscape.
- Campus founder Tade Oyerinde received support from Trey, Peter, and Joe Lale for his startup.
- Peter T, previously critical of college, became a supporter of Campus.
- Campus has gained significant traction and inbound interest over the past year.
Finding VC partners
- Venture funding was chosen due to the high-risk, high-reward nature of the business.
- The company aimed to capture a small sliver of the market and build a massive company.
- Sought venture capitalists who were interested in significant outcomes and fundamentally changing education in America.
- Silicon Valley was seen as the ideal location for funding moonshots.
- Campus was launched before COVID-19 as CampusWire, a Zoom for higher ed product.
- The pandemic led to exponential growth in 2020.
- The company pivoted from a paid online learning software to a free model due to the belief that the pandemic-driven demand for online learning was temporary.
Why Tade is drawn to High Education
- The pandemic highlighted the effectiveness and engagement of online learning, leading to increased interest and training among professors for remote teaching options.
- Tade Oyerinde, with a family background in education, gained early exposure to online learning through homeschooling in the 90s.
- Inspired by "The Social Network," Oyerinde created the viral app Uni Roulette during his university years, attracting investment and hundreds of thousands of users.
- Despite initial success, Uni Roulette faced challenges in sustaining exponential growth due to its fad nature, leading to a shift in focus towards building basic apps for universities.
- This unplanned venture into the education technology (EdTech) space aligned with Oyerinde's interests and background.
What inspired Tade
- The speaker shares personal anecdotes about how external factors, such as movies and random events, influenced their career choices.
- Hiring for a startup in the education sector requires a balance between expertise from traditional education backgrounds and operational excellence from tech companies.
- Campus, an education startup, aims to combine traditional academia with practical skills training to prepare students for the job market.
- They offer a three-step program: helping students discover their purpose, creating a personalized plan, and providing the necessary skills and knowledge.
- Graduates receive a credential or degree and many transfer to four-year universities without student loans.
- Campus plans to expand its program offerings and scale up its faculty network to provide excellent support to students.
- Their goal is to make their services accessible to anyone in America and eventually the world, providing the support needed to build the life they want.